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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Reflections on the Holocaust V: WHY--Pseudo-Scientific Beliefs

To the centuries-old
pseudo-religious beliefs in Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ
and in the blood libel, the Nazis added quite a bit of modern pseudo-scientific nonsense of
their own. Perhaps this pseudo-science appeared all the more respectable
because Germany was the center of true science in the first half of the 20th
Century. In his memoir Survival at
Auschwitz, Primo Levi, an Italian, explains that he knew German (a great
advantage in the concentration camp, which was run by German Nazi officers)
because of his university degree in chemistry. In Italy, Levi had had to study
chemistry in German, the language of science.

Side by side with legitimate
science, however, there existed a number of pseudo-scientific beliefs, all promoted
by men calling themselves scientists of one kind or another. Yehuda Bauer lists several of these on
pages 42 and 43 of A History of the
Holocaust. Christian Lassen
“proved” that Yiddish was an inferior language. Houston Stewart Chamberlain
held that each race carried its own benevolent spirit (Aryan) or malevolent
spirit (non-Aryan). Eugen During and Paul de Lagarde taught that a person’s
blood held indelible characteristics of pure race (Aryan) or impure race
(non-Aryan).

None of this was based on
the results of true scientific inquiry, experiment, and observation, but rather
on reading into nature what the pseudo-scientists’ own prejudices had
conditioned them to see. This type of pseudo-science was also prevalent in the
United States, where pseudo-scientists “proved” that black
African-Americans were inferior to white Caucasians.

On page 43 of A History of the Holocaust, Bauer quotes
Paul de Lagarde equating the Jews with a repulsive image, that of the insect,
the parasite. Speaking of the Jews, Paul de Lagarde says, “With trichinae and
bacilli one does not negotiate, nor are trichinae and bacilli to be educated:
they are exterminated as quickly and thoroughly as possible.”

Bauer further points out on
page 90 that these pseudo-scientific beliefs led to a crazy classification of
peoples. At the top were the fully human peoples—Aryans of Germanic blood.
Aryans of Germanic blood included the Germans themselves as well as the English
and the Scandinavians, who were considered worthy to be allies of Germany. Next
in line were the sub-human peoples—Aryan peoples whose blood was not Germanic.
These were the Latin peoples and the Slavic peoples, who were to be ruled by and
to become servants of the Germans. At the bottom came the non-humans—the
non-Aryans, namely the Jews. The Jews—equated with the devil himself and
with parasitic insects—were to be exterminated for the good of the rest of the
world.

The Jews, thus, became the
quintessential Other. Our Coursera Professor, Peter Kenez, points out in his
lecture “The Jews of Western Europe,” that the Jews were in fact visibly
different from other Europeans, especially in Eastern Europe. They were
different in their religion, their language, their physical characteristics,
their dress, their occupation, their self-government, and their dedication to
learning. Kenez says, “After the expulsion of the Muslims from the Iberian
Peninsula [in the late 15th Century], the Jews were the only non-Christian Other in Europe.” Second, as we
have seen, the Jews were believed to be different in crazy and fantastical ways: they were believed to be the devil
incarnate, something non-human.

As the quintessential Other,
the Jews were prime targets for the unhealthy psychological processes of projection
and scape-goating. This will be the subject of my next post.